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The brawl at the University of Virginia came ahead of a much larger rally planned for Saturday, when thousands are expected for what monitors described as the "largest hate-gathering of its kind in decades in the US".

The “alt-Right” demonstrators gathered late on Friday and chanted “blood and soil” and “one people, one nation, end immigration” as they carried burning torches through the university campus.

“Blood and soil” was a phrase commonly used by the Nazis to hail their ideas about racial superiority and traditional rural life.

The mostly male crowd marched through the empty campus in Charlottesville and rallied around a statue of Thomas Jefferson, who designed the university’s grounds.

There they clashed with a small group of counter-protesters, who had linked arms around the statue. Several people were injured as punches were exchanged and pepper-spray was fired.

Mike Signer, the mayor of Charlottesville, called the white nationalist march “a cowardly parade of hatred, bigotry, racism, and intolerance march down the lawns of the architect of our Bill of Rights”.

Larry Sabato, a professor at the university, said it was “the most nauseating thing I've ever seen” in his 47 years of being associated with the university.

Richard Spencer, the provocateur credited with coining the term alt-Right, was also at the rally.

The torch lit scenes on the university campus may be only a foreshadowing of the much larger demonstrations expected on Saturday at the Unite the Right rally - which is expected to bring together different factions of the alt-Right.

Police expect that between 2,000 and 6,000 demonstrators will gather in Emancipation Park around a statue of Robert E Lee, a Confederate general during the American Civil War.

White nationalist protesters have angrily opposed plans to take down statues of Lee and other Confederate figures who fought for the cause of slavery during the war.

The demonstrators accuse local governments of trying to erase history by removing the statues and often chant “you will not replace us” as they rally around the statues.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, a group that tracks extremist organisations in the US, said that Saturday’s rally may be the "largest hate-gathering of its kind in decades in the US".

The city of Charlottesville had tried to get the protest moved to another park but the rally organisers sued and a judge ruled they must be allowed in Emancipation Park.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), a civil liberties group, supported the nationalist demonstrators in their suit, saying that freedom of speech “applies equally to everyone regardless of their views”.

The ACLU has previously defended the right of the Ku Klux Klan and other extremist groups to hold rallies.

The governor of Virginia has urged people to stay away from the rally and not to take part in counter-protests.

Katherine Nolde, Richard Capron and Scott McLemee round up on-the-spot reports from the deadly confrontation between the far right and anti-racists in a Virginia city.

THE FAR-right demonstration in Charlottesville, Virginia, on August 12--probably the largest public gathering of the racist "alt-right" ever--was clear evidence of the murderous forces nurtured and emboldened by Donald Trump over the past two years.

And it had deadly consequences: One anti-fascist protester was killed and more than two dozen injured when a neo-Nazi terrorist drove his car at high speed into a counterdemonstration led by left organizations, including the International Socialist Organization (ISO), Democratic Socialists of America and Industrial Workers of the World, among others.

Trump issued a weasel-worded condemnation of "hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides" that fooled no one--especially not the far right. "He refused to even mention anything to do with us," one racist website gloated. "When reporters were screaming at him about White Nationalism he just walked out of the room."

So the fascists see Trump as one of their own--and for good reason.

But the hate on display in Charlottesville--and promoted by the hatemonger-in-chief--is galvanizing people across the country.

News of the racist car attack was met by a wave of solidarity--within hours, there were vigils and protests in dozens of cities, followed by many more the next day, and plans for still more in the days to come. By the end of the weekend, people had taken a stand in solidarity with Charlottesville in hundreds of towns and cities.

These people who sent a message of defiance were not only repulsed by the hatred of the fascists and horrified by their violence, but they understand the need to confront this menace before it can inflict more suffering and take more lives.

Charlottesville showed the grave threat we face in the form of an emboldened far right. But it is also revealing the potential to mobilize a mass opposition to the hatemongers, whether they strut in the streets or in the Oval Office.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

THE THOUSANDS mobilizing against the Trump agenda in recent months are making it impossible for the far right to claim it represents more than a small part of the U.S. population.

When the Klan came to Charlottesville last month to protest the removal of a statue of Confederate general Robert E. Lee from a city park, they attracted around 50 supporters--and were outnumbered 20 times over by antiracists.

Humiliated by this, far-right groups announced another rally for August. The city granted a permit for this past Saturday in Emancipation Park to "Unite the Right" organizers--a last-minute legal attempt to deny the permit was stayed by a judge based on an appeal by the ACLU. Permits were also granted to counterdemonstrators to assemble a couple blocks away in Justice Park.

The far right came looking for a fight in Charlottesville, and they got started Friday night with a torchlight parade on the University of Virginia campus. Chanting "Heil Trump" and "You will not replace us"--sometimes changed to "Jews will not replace us"--some used their lighted torches to threaten the small numbers of antiracist protesters who confronted them on campus.

If the racists thought they would have the same overwhelming force on their side the next day, they were wrong. The fascists were outnumbered by their opponents, ranging from Antifa contingents and the radical left to more moderate antiracist organizations. But the antifascists' advantage wasn't as large as it could have been.

Groups from each side made pass-by marches within sight of one another Saturday morning, and there were isolated clashes, leading to an atmosphere of confusion and uncertainly.

When a group of ISO members approached the southwest entrance to Justice Park, the counterdemonstration site, they found a handful of young white men with automatic rifles and red bandanas tied around their necks standing watch. Momentary fear dissipated when the socialists were welcomed with cheers and handshakes--these were members of Redneck Revolt, a newly formed militant Southern working-class self-defense group.

Local and state police were present, but they maintained a hands-off policy when the right-wingers made threatening moves against the counterprotesters. As a report from ProPublica recounted:

[A]t one of countless such confrontations, an angry mob of white supremacists formed a battle line across from a group of counterprotesters, many of them older and gray-haired, who had gathered near a church parking lot. On command from their leader, the young men charged and pummeled their ideological foes with abandon. One woman was hurled to the pavement, and the blood from her bruised head was instantly visible.

Standing nearby, an assortment of Virginia State Police troopers and Charlottesville police wearing protective gear watched silently from behind an array of metal barricades--and did nothing.

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WHEN VIRGINIA Gov. Terry McAuliffe declared a state of emergency at 11 a.m., the National Guard made its appearance. Police dispersed the far right from its spot in Emancipation Park--but this led to roaming groups of racists looking for a fight in the surrounding streets.

Counterdemonstrators heard that the fascists were headed to a part of town with a concentration of public housing to harass low-income residents.

A march was organized spontaneously in defense of the community. "Feelings of uncertainty and defenselessness changed immediately to confidence and authority," said one ISO member who was part of the action. "We wouldn't let the fascists control the day."

Some 300 antifascist protesters marched and chanted in tight formation, coming to a halt just before turning the corner on the street where the projects were located. But on arriving, they found no right-wingers. An organizer from the community went to the front of the march and got on the bullhorn, urging a withdrawal to decrease the chances of bringing police into the neighborhood.

The group made its way back downtown to find another contingent of counterdemonstrators flooding the street in an exhilarated mood. The groups merged and headed uphill toward Justice Park, planning to celebrate their seeming victory in sending the right-wingers packing.

They were about halfway up the hill when all at once came what sounded like a crash or explosion. Bodies flew into the air, and people were screaming. A car had driven into the crowd at full speed, then reversed up the hill and out of sight.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

IN THE chaos, people did their best to maintain composure, take stock of the situation and call for medics assigned to the march. They moved the wounded out of the street--out of harm's way, in the event of another automobile assault--and called for ambulances.

What arrived instead was a police tank. A man in military dress emerged from the top of the hatch with a rifle designed to shoot tear gas canisters. Three police cars filled in behind him, along with a squad of cops in riot gear. Police finally shut down the area, and the demonstrators dispersed.

Police later reported arresting and charging an Ohio man, James Fields Jr., with second-degree murder, three counts of malicious wounding, and failure to stop at the scene of a crash that resulted in a death. Photographs from earlier that day show the killer brandishing a shield with the emblem of the neo-Nazi American Vanguard group.

Fields' car attack killed 32-year-old Heather Heyer, a native of Charlottesville who worked as a paralegal and was passionately devoted to social justice.

A neighbor said "she lived her life like her path--and it was for justice." Heather's mother Susan Bro teared up as she told a writer from HuffPost: "Somehow I almost feel that this is what she was born to be, is a focal point for change."

More than two dozen other people were seriously injured. Bill Burke, a member of the ISO from Athens, Ohio, was among those taken away from the scene in an ambulance, given concern that he might have suffered spinal injuries. He didn't, but he was treated for a concussion and monitored for brain damage, along with lacerations to his face that required many stitches and staples, and severe abrasions on his arms and legs.

Burke was released from the hospital late Sunday afternoon and is expected to make a full recovery. He sent this message via fellow ISO members:

I appreciate the support and solidarity from everyone. I hope that what the fascists did is a wake-up call for our side. Racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia and ableism: The right-wingers represent all the worst parts of this capitalist system. If we really want to stop them, we have to be better organized and fight in solidarity against all oppression. Ultimately, we need to fight for a new world that is run for people, not for profit.

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THAT THE vehicular assault was no accident seems obvious to everyone but the likes of Donald Trump.

But anyone who doubts it should consider the alt-right meme that appeared months before the Charlottesville showdown. It shows the words "ALL LIVES SPLATTER" above a car plowing into three people--and beneath it: "Nobody cares about your protest. Keep your ass out of the road."

It follows Trump's spirit of "fun" terrorism--with his "joking" offers to pay the legal bills if his supporters beat up protesters and "tongue-in-cheek" references to assassinating an opposing candidate. Such rhetoric has emboldened reactionaries like the torch-carriers reenacting the Nuremburg rally on Friday night in Charlottesville.

Their sickening violence has already led to an eruption of antiracist protest around the country. But we can't stop there. We need a sustained movement that mobilizes to confront the far right with much greater numbers whenever they try to raise their heads--and that organizes a radical left alternative to the fascists' politics of despair and scapegoating.

As one participant in the Charlottesville antifascist protests wrote on social media:

In order to command the streets, we have to fill them. If we had had people covering every inch of downtown Charlottesville, we wouldn't have been so vulnerable.

In order to demobilize the fascist movement, they have to be physically outnumbered and driven out...Isolate them, demoralize them.

The heartbreaking thing is that the counter-protesters in Cville had just begun to feel a sense of confidence and unity in action [before the car attack]....Two contingents, two crowds marching happened to converge downtown and were heading to Justice Park to celebrate, finally having achieved a sense of organization after being divided between multiple locations.

This is the goal of the far right: to terrorize, intimidate and destroy the organizations of workers and the left, and anyone else they deem a threat.

We cannot let them become more emboldened because of what happened today.

Elizabeth Schulte reports on organizing for the August 27 Bay Area Rally Against Hate--and a new call for solidarity actions to take place around the U.S. that weekend.

August 18, 2017

ANTI-RACIST activists in the Bay Area who are mobilizing for a counterprotest against the far right when it rallies in Berkeley, California, on August 27 are calling on people everywhere to join them in a National Weekend of Solidarity.

The national call for support on the day of the Berkeley counterdemonstration came about after the white supremacist terror attack on anti-fascists in Charlottesville, Virginia, which took the life of Heather Heyer.

Amid the national and international outpouring of solidarity, the coordinating committee of the Bay Area Rally Against Hate, which has been organizing for the 27th, voted unanimously for this resolution:

We ask that people all over the United States take some kind of local action on August 27 in order to demonstrate solidarity with Charlottesville, San Francisco, Berkeley and all the other locations targeted by white supremacists. Whether solidarity takes the form of a rally, public forum, movie-screening or social gathering, a show of support from around the country will go a long way toward raising the political cost of racist violence. We can push the neo-Nazis and other far right racists back into the shadows. Please join us in this critical struggle!

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THE FAR right has made Berkeley, with its reputation as a bastion of progressive ideas, a target. In particular, the reactionaries have brought their hate to the home of the Free Speech Movement of the 1960s in an attempt to twist its democratic legacy for their own purposes.

In February, when former Breitbart News editor Milo Yiannopoulos came to the University of California (UC) at Berkeley, thousands of people turned out to protest, and campus officials eventually canceled the event.

Several more confrontations followed, with the bigots strengthening their turnout each time. In April, several factions of the "alt right" and "patriots movement" mobilized from up and down the West Coast to descend on downtown's Berkeley's Martin Luther King Jr. Plaza, leading to a far-right rampage in the streets.

With school getting underway for the fall, the same forces that turned Berkeley streets into a scene of chaos and violence are coming back for two protests on the August 26-27 weekend.

But after the alt-right's murderous attack in Charlottesville, people around the country have a much clearer view of what far right organizing produces--violence and terror.

Charlottesville has been called the largest mobilizations of far-right groups in decades. And Donald Trump's response in the aftermath showed he is unwilling to take a stand against the fascist groups that rampaged that day--on the contrary, he put the blame on anti-racists, several dozen of whom were victims of a white supremacist car terror attack.

The lesson from Charlottesville is that if we are going to stop the right from growing, our side will have to stop them.

Around the country, the overwhelming response to what happened in Charlottesville was horror, sorrow and outrage--followed by action, as thousands of people took part in protests and vigils in solidarity with Charlottesville.

Heather Heyer's mother has courageously lent strength to those determined to stand up against the bigots who took her life. "I'd rather have my child," she told those attending her daughter's memorial service on Wednesday, "but if I've got to give her up, we're going to make it count."

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

MAKING IT count has to start right away. On August 19, the alt-right is returning to the Boston Common, and anti-racists are hoping the wave of solidarity with Charlottesville will bolster their counterdemonstration.

Then comes August 27 in Berkeley, where opponents of the right have been organizing for months to turn out a resistance. Along with the call for national solidarity, this will be an opportunity to show the strength of our side--that there are many more people willing to stand up to racism than those who want to spread their message of bigotry.

The organizing in Berkeley has involved a broad coalition of groups and individuals coming together: "an ad hoc working group composed of residents of the Bay Area--people of color, working-class people, immigrants, queer, gay, bi, and trans people, Muslims, Jews, Christians, liberals, leftists and others," reads a press release from the rally organizers. "We think that it is time to get together, celebrate our differences, show our solidarity, and speak out against the hateful currents in American society."

Endorsers include the Alameda County Labor Council, Alameda for Black Lives, Berkeley Federation of Teachers, Council on American-Islamic Relations-San Francisco Bay Area, several area chapters of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), the International Socialist Organization (ISO), NARAL Pro-Choice California, the Muslim Student Association at Berkeley and more.

According to Alex Schmaus, an ISO member who has been part of organizing for the August 27 rally:

When Charlottesville happened, it became clearer than ever that this isn't just a local fight--it is a fight taking place across the country. This also made us appreciate what we have accomplished in the Bay Area, organizing many different social forces, including unions, student groups, political organization and faith groups.

Hopefully, this will help people around the country pull together the forces they all need to win this fight.

Many of the people that first came together to plan this are member of groups that were on the ground in Charlottesville, including the DSA, the ISO, the Industrial Workers of the World and others. We felt that tragedy personally and this was a way to make meaning from it.

The organizers of the Berkeley protest have emphasized building a united stand against fascism that can include as many groups and individuals who would like to fight the right as possible. According to Alex:

The street fighting that took place in Berkeley in the spring between the far right and the far left created a situation where anti-fascism had become a spectator's sport in Berkeley. What we want to do is provide a space for people in the Bay Area to see that there are many of us that want us to take a stand against racism and the far right, and we can keep each other safe when we come together.

The solidarity vigils and protests that took place after Charlottesville, echoing in many ways the protests that came in the days after Trump's inauguration, show there is a growing layer of people who want to come out and be part of defeating the far right.

Abdullah Puckett, a member of the Black Student Union and Muslim Student Association at UC-Berkeley, talked about organizing for the rally:

The main thing on my mind after Charlottesville was the importance of doing this now. We have to come out and show people that there is a voice of reason, inclusion and civility here in Berkeley, and that closed-off hateful mentality is not welcome here and is not a representation of this community. Another important thing is a peaceful demonstration.

One of the things I have been trying to do is bring people together. There is too much division and isolation from one another. The more that people come together and have meaningful discussions, the more we will realize what we have in common and that we can disagree civilly.

The wonderful thing about the planning process for this rally is that at each meeting, we've had more people, more organizations, more voices coming out to support this demonstration. It's been wonderful seeing how many people are out there who wanted to do something like this and have now found a group that is putting it together.

We should reach out to everyone who is trying to send a message of peaceful unity and civility, and we can't isolate ourselves from people who potentially want to work together with us. Reach out on campus, got to union halls, everywhere people want to get involved.

Berkeley organizers encourage you, wherever you live, to organize whatever action you can, big or small--rallies, marches, public meetings, speakouts, cultural events or teach-ins. For more information, check out the Bay Area Rally Against Hate Facebook page, and join the call for a National Weekend of Solidarity Against Hate and add links to your statement, action or events here.

About 20,000 anti-racists turned out in Boston today to confront 'the master race', of whom only about fifty (yes, you read that right, 50!) showed up. The cops had to escourt them away for their own safety:

Even more anti-fascists are likely to show up in Berkeley next week. The Boston show of strength should put many of those brave fascists off attending.

Back in their holes with this detritus!

The emancipation of the working class will be an act of the workers themselves.